Today I read You’d still work if you didn’t have to by Elle Griffin. Meaningful work and reflections on my career have been on my mind lately, so this article drew me in.
From the title, I figured I already knew the main message—that in a utopia, people would still work even if they didn’t have to in order to have their biological needs met. They would still work because they enjoyed it.
But I still wanted to read to see what points Elle would make along the way. And there were some nice points :)
We ask “what do you want to be when you grow up?” because we believe the thing we want to do could also be our work. We ask: “what would you do for free?” and use the question to inform what we should do for money. In America, we ask people about their jobs because there is an inherent belief that they are at least somewhat aligned with something we want to do. At least, much more so than when we were all farmers or industrial workers.
I’ve met people who dread the “What do you do?” question at social gatherings because they hate their jobs. And I get that. But this passage reminded me of why we ask. For the askers, the asking is a chance to get someone excited telling others about something they love doing. But not everyone loves their job, and probably no one loves their job all the time.
What would I be doing if I didn’t need the money? Learning things (through reading, exploration, data collection, data analysis, hearing from others), sharing insights (teaching, writing). So my current job does involve the things I would be doing for free. It just has them in a different balance than I would have wanted and has additional expectations that I would ideally go without.
It was nice to be reminded that challenge is essential for the fun it brings. But the scales can tip too far, and too much challenge in difficult circumstances can make the doing feel like work:
Even if we take up mountain climbing, we would accept some limitations or “rules to the game” so that we might feel a sense of accomplishment upon achieving some challenge. A mountain climber wouldn’t, for instance, take an elevator to the top of Everest if he could. The challenge is the point. It is what gives us purpose.
It’s what makes the game fun to play.
It’s also what makes it look a little bit like work.
That we have to choose the challenge was a beautiful reminder:
In his mind, the end of work is actually just going back to work, but this time with a better attitude about it. With the spirit of playing a game you have chosen to play.
I am actively trying to choose my job every day. I am trying to see the things that I’m doing—even the things that I don’t love—as partly what I do love. In the spirit of want what you have by Isabel. As she notes, this mindset isn’t about complacency. It’s about perspective shift.
I am lucky to have a job that has the flexibility for me to reshape the core parts of my day-to-day into what I want to do most. But that change requires exploration. I won’t be more fulfilled immediately, as much as I want to. But I can keep exploring and working towards being my true self in this role. Which leads me to wonder what the sheer act of doing that might help facilitate. What happens when a collective of people choose the right challenges for them? What emergent behaviors result?
”We will then be able to talk about a Utopia which embodies that ideal,” the grasshopper says, “that is, a state of affairs where people are engaged only in those activities which they value intrinsically.”
And the things we intrinsically value might prove valuable to society too. In a world where all of the houses can be 3D printed for a dollar, might you prefer to buy a unique handcrafted one? In a world where you can purchase anything on Amazon, might you still prefer a handcrafted candle from an artisan?
If so, you might even be willing to work more in order to buy them. And more people might go to work to make them. Everyone would be working on something they value so that they can have a life that they value. They would be playing a game without even realizing it.
The grasshopper’s dream realized.